I can't even imagine doing laundry like that! Thank you for sharing.

I really did like using the wringer washer. That was my first washing machine after we got married and I had it for some years. My Grandma heated her water outside in a great big black kettle and had her clothes stick. She did laundry outside in the summer and I guess moved it for the winter months. We also had blueing we used to make the white clothes look even whiter. I used that wringer washer until the early 1960's.

Sue

My gosh, Marilyn, I forgot all about the bluing! I think ours came in a bottle about the size of a pop bottle. I think it was Mrs. Stewart's!.

Wow! That sounds awful....but I'm sure at the time THAT was how it was done. Insightful. I LOVE my front loading washing machine even more now I read this. lol

Our first home when we got married, had city water, but no bathroom and no running water. Pipes had to be run, no water heater, so all water was heated on our electric stove. For the washing machine I used it in the kitchen in the winter and on the back porch in the summer. To heat the water in it, I had a little electric heater that was put down in the filled tub of the washer and then plugged in and you heated the water that way, unplugged it and took it out and you were ready to do your laundry. I did fill my washer and twin tubs with a hose. We did not have a bathroom inside until 1957. My first washer was not a new one, got a new one when I was pregnant with our first daughter. It was a Kenmore from Sears. It had a pump to pump the water out of the washer tub into a sink or drain.

Sue

My niece got her hand caught in the wringer. Knowing my nephew, he probably told her to do it. She was about 3. There was a release on top but instead of hitting the release, my sister jerked it out. It left her hand frozen like she was shooting the finger all the time. :(

I was about 5 when I got my long hair caught in the wringer washer up to the scalp. I can remember it just like it happened yesterday.

After my mother died in 1954, my job was the weekly wash on Saturdays. We had a washing machine with an attached wringer that worked with centrifugal force. I followed the methods I had seen my mother use. First the hot water from a hose attached to the basement wash tub faucet filled the wash tub with hot water and I washed the white clothes. When I used the wringer, on the first wringing, I directed the sudsy water back into the wash tub and put in the lightly colored clothes. (Following that load, I would wash the dark clothes and then rugs or dust rags and mops.) Then I sloshed all the clothes from the wringer into one of the big divided cement sink tubs. Then the wringer ran the clothes and the water drained down the sink drain. While that was going on, the 2nd sink filled, I rinsed the clothes again, and then wrung the clothes with the water directed to the sink to drain. If anything was to be starched, I did that next, then lugged the clothes upstairs to the line in the back yard if it was nice. Otherwise, in winter and rainy weather, I hung the laundry on the lines strung throughout the basement. Our clothes for a family of 4 kids and dad filled that clothes line, which drooped from the weight of the wet laundry, and so we used a few clothesline props about 8 - 10 feet tall to lift the heavy lines up high for the breeze. We sent out the sheets and dad's dress shirts to the laundry weekly. Close to the washing machine was a 2 burner stove that was about 18-24 inches tall for boiling diapers when we had been babies. Then almost all outer wear had to be ironed for school and work. Tshirts did not need it, nor jeans, pjs or underwear. Blouses, shirts, dresses, and skirts needed ironing as did table cloths, aprons, and handkerchiefs.

Seniorgal, thank you for this post. I have vague memories of my mother doing loads of laundry with a wringer washer, down in the caverns of our scary basement. What an o-r-d-e-a-l!

I always have a bottle of Mrs. Stewart's in the house! I do use it in the laundry, but bluing has many household uses, too. ;-)

Seniorgal..I love reading your stories THANK YOU! I also love that others have chimed in with laundry stories.

I have been on the hunt for a automatic wringer washer. Just something to play with outside in the summer. I also restore old cotton bed sheets so I could dump in boiling water and really strip them clean. LOL.

I can remember my mom using a wringer washing machine when I was 5 in 1956. It was an older model that my dad bought used. Couldn't afford a new automatic one and with 5 kids, she did a lot of laundry. My sister and I helped by handing her clothes and pins from the basket when she hung them on the clothes line.

EVERYTHING about house keeping was a huge chore in the past! I remember my grandmother ironing with a flat iron she heated on the stove. And yes, she did have a non-electric wringer washer. My mother hauled basket after basket of heavy wet clothes up the basement steps and out to the yard to put on the clothes lines unless it was below freezing or raining. Then back in and to be basement to be ironed (she even ironed my father's boxer shorts!). And yes, bluing and cooking starch for my father's white shirts.

I remember ration coupons, margarine that came in a big white block that looked like lard, and had to be colored with a nasty packet of orange powder.

I remember my father washing the car (for Sunday church) every Sat if the weather was good. I don't think there was such thing as a drive-thru carwash in those days.

Dishwashing, taking out smelly garbage - it was all a LOT of work. My mother also made home made hot bread every breakfast and dinner, a pie or cake almost daily, and always homemade cookies. She washed every window in our house, inside and out, twice yearly. She was a fanatic about cleaning - you could have eaten off our garage floor! She was always tired, but lived to be 85.

I grew up in a wringer washer house. With parents who grew up during the drought and depression there would never be a working appliance replaced, no matter how worn it was. And don't forget to raise that wringer so the rollers aren't in contact when you're done with it.

My aunt always boiled my uncle's clothes. He was a painter.

I used a wringer and followed a good many of Seniorgals ways as well-and that was just in the 80's!! Country livin'!

I grew up with a wringer washer in the basement as probably all of folks that are over age 70 did. Wash day (Monday) at my house was very much like wash days that seniorgal described. For the first 7 years after I married in 1959, with 2 children that came quickly, I did the wringer washer, hang to dry laundry routine.

Wash day of course included baby clothes and, of course, diapers. With 2 in diapers at the same time, wash day was every day! Those of you that never went the cloth diaper route most likely couldn't imagine how much more work that it added to wash day.

Yes, lots of diapers, for all four of mine.

Sue

I'm 65 and still remember using our wringer washer. From there the clothes went outside to hang. My grandmother used to soak her crocheted doilies in starch and stretch them on a board to dry. I still have some of those doilies.

What great memories. I was telling my granddaughter about when I got married and what life was like in 1958. She was amazed there were no disposable diapers and that we had to wash them. No dryers, hang them out the window or walk to the clothes lines. No microwave, no prepared food except in cans, no fast food restaurants and on and on and she said "I'll bet it was a much more connected time for people as they had no celfones, ipads, computers etc. I told her people dropped in and visited all the time and everything came to a halt to make a "nice cup of tea and whatever home made yummy as my Mom baked all the time". She wished it could be that way now. People only text and seldom visit. Do any of you have drop in people in your life? I have my sisters but they always call first. One gf will pop in unannounced and the grands too.

I have a scar on my arm from the wringer washer.

I remember my mother doing her laundry similar to the way sheilajoyce did hers. We even had the divided cement sink tubs for rinsing the clothes. I was scared of the wringer on the washer, always afraid I would get my hand caught in it.

I sure remember broken zipper pulls from going through the wringers wrong.

My Grandmother had a wringer washer and I loved watching her use it. ( I made a pest of myself ) Each time she told me to fold the clothes with the buttons on the inside so they wouldn't break in the wringer. Her's had a big round lid with a black knob in the center. I loved the strong , sweet, soapy smell from the hot water and big bubbles. The scent filled the whole house. And does anything in the world smell better than those white cotton sheets dried on the clothesline ? They could cure insomnia.